Boeing’s moon rocket faces uncertain future under Trump’s NASA |
Boeing’s moon rocket faces uncertain future under Trump’s NASA
NASA’s Boeing Co. rocket just propelled astronauts farther into space than ever before. The Trump administration is already looking to competitors for a replacement.
About a week before the $24 billion Space Launch System pushed the four crew members of the Artemis II mission around the moon, NASA asked rivals what options they could offer for its ambitious plan of future lunar trips. That call, echoed almost immediately in the White House’s budget request, put a big question mark on the future of Boeing’s beleaguered rocket after roughly a decade of development.
The fate of the program — worth tens of billions of dollars over the next few years — has become a key test for Jared Isaacman, the billionaire fintech entrepreneur who President Donald Trump named to run NASA last year, in his efforts to make the space agency faster and more efficient. He’s counting on new commercial companies like SpaceX to provide cheaper alternatives to the costly systems like SLS developed by legacy players like Boeing and Lockheed Martin Corp.
“Because that program draws on such history, has contractors, hundreds of subcontractors, tens of thousands of people, it’s expensive,” Isaacman said in February. “It’s not the vehicle that you are going to take to and from the moon a couple of times a year as you build out a moon base the way the president wants.”
That network of support — Artemis counts suppliers in all 50 states — has helped the program survive efforts to kill it over years of delays and cost overruns. The administration’s attempt to phase out the........